Apology for kids shipped from Britain to colonies

After 1920, most of the children went to Australia through programs run by the government, religious groups and children's charities.

A 2001 Australian report said that between 6,000 and 30,000 children from Britain and Malta, often taken from unmarried mothers or impoverished families, were sent alone to Australia as migrants during the 20th century. Many of the children were told that they were orphans, though most had either been abandoned or taken from their families by the state. Siblings were commonly split up once they arrived in Australia.

Authorities believed they were acting in the children's best interests, but the migration also was intended to stop them from being a burden on the British state while supplying the receiving countries with potential workers. A 1998 British parliamentary inquiry noted that "a further motive was racist: the importation of 'good white stock' was seen as a desirable policy objective in the developing British Colonies."

British Children's Secretary Ed Balls said the child migrant policy was "a stain on our society."

"The apology is symbolically very important," he told Sky News television.

"I think it is important that we say to the children who are now adults and older people and to their offspring that this is something that we look back on in shame," he said.

"It would never happen today. But I think it is right that as a society, when we look back and see things which we now know were morally wrong, that we are willing to say we're sorry."

Britain has been trying to make amends since the late 1990s by funding trips to reunite migrants with their families in Britain.

Brown's office said officials would consult with representatives of the surviving children before making a formal apology next year.

Official apologies for historical wrongs have proved controversial.

Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard initially resisted calls to apologize to institutionalized children and Australian Aborigines, arguing that contemporary Australians should not take responsibility for mistakes made by past generations.

Rudd reversed the policy after he was elected in 2007 and apologized to Aborigines for 200 years of injustice since European settlement.

(Edit:Ruby)